The last entry should be the USB stick you just plugged in. If you’re in doubt, remove it, run df again and check that the line disappears. The left column in df’s output is the partition, and the path up to the number is the path to the device. In our example, ‘/dev/sdb1’ is the partition, and ‘/dev/sdb’ is the path to the device.

Important note: It is really, really important that you get the device path right - you can cause irreparable damage to your system if you don’t.

After finding the device path, use the dd command to write your appliance to the USB stick. dd needs two arguments: the input file (your appliance), and the output file (the path to your USB device). In our example, the input file is named “/home/suse/myappliance.raw” and the path to the device is “/dev/sdb”, so we run the following command in a terminal:

sudo dd if=/home/suse/myappliance.raw of=/dev/sdb bs=4k

The last argument (bs=4k) is optional, but adding it speeds up writing to the USB device.

Bear in mind that this will completely overwrite the USB device. Make sure you don’t have any important data on it first!

Writing to a USB stick is usually quite slow, so don’t be alarmed if it takes a long time. When dd has finished, it will tell you some statistics about how much data it has written to the USB stick. If your USB stick has a light on it that blinks when data is being written, wait until it stops blinking before removing it.

Note: As writing images blockwise is a critical process, compare the md5sums of the raw image and the newly created device:

md5sum /home/suse/myappliance.raw
md5sum /dev/sdb

Now you have a custom software appliance ready to be booted from your USB stick!

To get persistence on a live hybrid USB stick system, you have to create a second partition on the stick:

fdisk /dev/sdb
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3935.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (661-3935, default 661):
Using default value 661
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (661-3935, default 3935):
Using default value 3935
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Writing image to USB flash drives (in Windows)

The GUI way

The hard way

Danger! This instruction is for experts!You can cause irreparable damage to your system if you make errors here.

To store the appliance you’ve created on a bootable USB stick, select the disk image type in the build tab, then build and download the gzip-compressed appliance. Uncompress and untar the appliance. Perhaps you can use 7-zip, a tool unter GNU LGPL licence.

To write your appliance to a USB stick in a Windows enviroment, you need to the ’dd for windows’ tool.

To find the device to write to, insert the USB stick, open the command line (cmd), and type:

The entry we are looking for is the one that says removable media, which is the USB stick you just plugged in. If you’re in doubt, remove it, run dd –list again, and check if the line disappears. The information we need is the \.\f:

Important note: It is really, really important that you get the device path right - you can cause irreparable damage to your system if you don’t.

After finding the device path, you need to run dd to write your appliance to the USB stick. dd needs two arguments: the input file (your appliance) and the output file (the path to your USB device). In our example, the input file is named “c:\temp\myappliance.raw” and the path to the device is “\.\f:”, so we run the following command in a terminal window:

dd if=c:\home\suse\myappliance.raw of=\\.\f: bs=4k

The last argument (bs=4k) is optional, but adding it will speed up writing to the USB device.

Bear in mind that this will completely overwrite the USB device. Make sure you don’t have any important data on it first!

Writing to a USB stick is usually quite slow, so don’t be alarmed if it takes a long time. When dd has finished, it will tell you some statistics about how much data it has written to the USB stick. If your USB stick has a light on it that blinks when data is being written, wait until it stops blinking before removing it.

Now you have a custom software appliance ready to be booted from your USB stick!

Check the MD5SUM of the raw image and the USB stick

We received feedback that defective USB sticks can show problems with whole systems but not with single files. If your USB stick shows confusing behavior, check the MD5SUM to be sure that your Linux system is not broken.

Note: As writing images blockwise is a critical process, please compare the md5sums of the raw image and the newly created device:

md5sum /home/suse/myappliance.raw
md5sum /dev/sdb

Copying an image onto a hard disk

That is the same case as How to copy an image onto a USB drive but with the difference that you need to boot from an external media, like another USB stick or liveCD with the dd tool on it.

An alternative is to boot from some live media and then transfer the image over the network from another machine. To do so, you need a live media, which contains netcat, and you have to execute the following command on the machine, where the image should be written to the hard disk:

netcat -l -p1234 | dd of=/dev/sda

Make sure that the of argument points to the disk you want to write to. Content on this disk will be lost.

On the machine where the image is located, execute the following command:

dd if=/path/to/image.raw | netcat 1.2.3.4 1234

Replace 1.2.3.4 by the IP address of the machine you are writing to. 1234 is just a random network port. Use a different number here, if needed.

Changing configurations on disk image

Testing an image on qemu

You can test the images on qemu before copying them to USB or disk. Although you can do this with qemu, qemu-kvm shows a better performance. In any case, the disk image has no free space, as it would expand on the USB or disk, but it would not on qemu. After making a copy of it, you can add some free space with the command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=image.raw bs=1 count=1 conv=notrunc seek=3G

Then try the image on qemu or qemu-kvm:

qemu image.raw

or

qemu-kvm image.raw

or

qemu-kvm --snapshot -m 512 image.raw

Making a USB drive bootable

It is known that in some situations the USB drive would not boot. Sometimes it may boot once, then stop booting afterwards. The problem is that the main partition should be marked as bootable. To do this, connect the usb disk and in a terminal enter: (/dev/sdb has to be your USB: Make sure to use the right device!)